The shadow of that soul by which I live,
How late thou art! the sphered sun had climbed
The sea; my heart was sick with hope, before
The printless air felt thy belated plumes.
Pan. Pardon, great Sister! but my wings were faint
With the delight of a remembered dream,
As are the noon-tide plumes of summer winds
Satiate with sweet flowers. I was wont to sleep
Peacefully, and awake refreshed and calm
Before the sacred Titan's fall, and thy
Unhappy love, had made, thro' use and pity,
Both love and woe familiar to my heart
As they had grown to thine: erewhile I slept
Under the glaucous caverns of old Oceár
Within dim bowers of green and purple moss,
Our young Ione's soft and milky arms
Locked them, as now, behind my dark moist hair,
While my shut eyes and cheek were pressed within
The folded depth of her life-breathing bosom:
But not as now, since I am made the wind
Which fails beneath the music that I bear
Of thy most wordless converse; since dissolved
Into the sense with which love talks, my rest
Was troubled and yet sweet; my waking hours
Too full of care and pain.
And let me read thy dream.
With our sea-sister at his feet I slept.
The mountain mists, condensing at our voice
Under the moon, had spread their snowy flakes,
From the keen ice shielding our linked sleep.
Then two dreams came. One, I remember not.
But in the other his pale wound-worn limbs
Fell from Prometheus, and the azure night
Grew radiant with the glory of that form
Which lives unchanged within, and his voice fell
Like music which makes giddy the dim brain,
Faint with intoxication of keen joy:
Sister of her whose footsteps pave the world
"With loveliness-more fair than aught but her
"Whose shadow thou art-lift thine eyes on me.
I lifted them: the overpowering light
Of that immortal shape was shadowed o'er
By love; which, from his soft and flowing limbs,
And passion-parted lips, and keen faint eyes,
Steamed forth like vaporous fire; an atmosphere
Which wrapt me in its all-dissolving power,
As the warm ether of the morning sun
Wraps ere it drinks some cloud of wandering dew.
I was not, heard not, moved not, only felt
His presence flow and mingle thro' my blood
Till it became his life, and his grew mine,
And I was thus absorb'd, until it past,
And like the vapours when the sun sinks down,
Gathering again in drops upon the pines,
And tremulous as they, in the deep night
My being was condensed; and as the rays
Of thought were slowly gathered, I could hear
His voice, whose accents lingered ere they died
Like footsteps of weak melody: thy name
Among the many sounds alone I heard
Of what might be articulate: tho' still
I listened through the night when sound was none. Ione wakened then, and said to me:
"Canst thou divine what troubles me to-night? "I always knew what I desired before,
Nor ever found delight to wish in vain. "But now I cannot tell thee what I seek; "I know not; something sweet, since it is sweet "Even to desire; it is thy sport, false sister; "Thou hast discovered some enchantment old, "Whose spells have stolen my spirit as I slept "And mingled it with thine: for when just now "We kissed, I felt within thy parted lips
"The sweet air that sustained me, and the warmth
"Of the life-blood, for loss of which I faint,
"Quivered between our intertwining arms."
I answered not, for the Eastern star grew pale,
But fled to thee.
Asia. Thou speakest, but thy words
Are as the air: I feel them not. Oh, lift
Thine eyes, that I may read his written soul:
Pan. I lift them tho' they droop beneath the load Of that they would express: what canst thou see But thine own fairest shadow imaged there?
Asia. Thine eyes are like the deep, blue, boundless heaven,
Contracted to two circles underneath
Their long fine lashes; dark, far, measureless,
Orb within orb, and line thro' line inwoven.
Pan. Why lookest thou as if a spirit past?
Asia. There is a change: beyond their inmost depth I see a shade, a shape: 'tis He, arrayed
In the soft light of his own smiles, which spread
Like radiance from the cloud-surrounded morn.
Prometheus, it is thine! depart not yet!
Say not those smiles that we shall meet again
Within tnat bright pavilion which their beams
Shall build on the waste world? The dream is told.
What shape is that between us? Its rude hair
Roughens the wind that lifts it; its regard
Is wild and quick, yet 'tis a thing of air,
For thro' its grey robe gleams the golden dew
Whose stars the noon has quench'd not.
Pan. It is mine other dream.
Asia. It disappears.
Pan. It passes now into my mind. Methought
As we sate here, the flower-infolding buds
Burst on yon lightning-blasted almond-tree,
When swift from the white Scythian wilderness
A wind swept forth wrinkling the Earth with frost;
I looked, and all the blossoms were blown down;
But on each leaf was stamped, as the blue bells
Of Hyacinth tell Apollo's written grief.
OH, FOLLOW, FOLLOW!
Asia. As you speak, your words
Fill, pause by pause, my own forgotten sleep
With shapes. Methought among the lawns together
We wandered, underneath the young grey dawn,
And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds
Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains
Shepherded by the slow unwilling wind;
And the white dew on the new-bladed grass,
Just piercing the dark earth, hung silently;
And there was more which I remember not;
But on the shadows of the morning clouds,
Athwart the purple mountain slope, was written
FOLLOW, OH, FOLLOW! As they vanished by,
And on each herb, from which Heaven's dew had fallen
The like was stamped, as with a withering fire
A wind arose among the pines; it shook
The clinging music from their boughs, and then
Low, sweet. faint, sounds, like the farewell of ghosts, Were heard: OH, FOLLOW, FOLLOW, FOLLOW, ME!
And then I said: " Panthea, look on me."
But in the depth of those beloved eyes
Still I saw FOLLOW, FOLLOW!
Pan. The crags, this clear spring morning, mock our
Asia. Hark! Spirits speak. The liquid responses Of their aerial tongues yet sound.
Oh, follow, follow,
As our voice recedeth
Thro' the caverns hollow,
Where the forest spreadeth
More distant) Oh, follow, follow.
Thro' the caverns hollow.
As the song floats thou pursue,
Where the wild bee never flew,
Thro' the noon-tide darkness deep,
By the odour-breathing sleep
Of faint night flowers, and the waves
At the fountain-lighted caves,
While our music, wild and sweet,
Mocks thy gently falling feet,
Asia. Shall we pursue the sound? It grows more faint And distant.
Pan. List' the strain floats nearer now.
In the world unknown
Sleeps a voice unspoken;
By that step alone
Can its rest be broken,
Child of Ocean!
Asia. How the notes sink upon the ebbing wind'
Oh, follow, follow!
Thro' the caverns hollow,
As the song floats thou pursue,
By the woodland noon-tide dew;
By the forests, lakes, and fountains,
Thro' the many-folded mountains;
To the rents, and gulphs, and chasms,
Where the Earth reposed from spasms,
On the day when He and thou
Parted, to commingle now,
Child of Ocean!
Asia. Come, sweet Panthes lie thy hand in mine, And follow, ere the voices fade away
|